ce owned
him as "Mawstuh Majah"; and mingling freely with them were the laborers,
white and black, from the Gordon iron-furnace.

Thomas Jefferson brought up memories from that solemn rite administered
so simply and yet so impressively under the June sky, with the
many-pointing forest spires to lift the soul to heights ecstatic. One
was the singing of the choir, minimized and made celestially sweet by
the lack of bounding walls and roof. Another was the sight of his
father's face, with the grim smile gone, and the steadfast eyes gravely
tolerant as he--Thomas Jefferson--was going down into the water. A
third--and this might easily become the most lasting of all--was the
memory of how his mother clasped him in her arms as he came up out of
the water, all wet and dripping as he was, and sobbed over him as if her
heart would break.

II

THE CEDARS OF LEBANON

Thomas Jefferson's twelfth summer fell in the year 1886; a year
memorable in the annals of the Lebanon iron and coal region as the first
of a